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Academic Commons Search Resultsen-usChildren and Megadisasters: Lessons Learned in the New Millenniumhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:155368
Garrett, Andrew L.; Grant, Roy F.; Madrid, Paula; Brito, Arturo; Abramson, David M.; Redlener, Irwin E.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:15749Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000From the beginnings of human society, both nature and our own species have found ways to traumatically disrupt the status quo. Despite the many catastrophes in our history, the term disaster has been difficult to define. Most definitions include some reference to the event’s impact on people, the economy, or the environment. More theoretically, a disaster can be seen as a complex function of risk and vulnerability. As an example, the magnitude of a hurricane disaster is not as simple as the force of the hurricane itself upon a community but rather a sum of those forces (eg, storm-force winds) plus the special vulnerabilities faced by the community (eg, levee failure) plus the community’s capacity to reduce the actual or potential negative consequences of risk (eg, an inability to evacuate citizens). It is complicated interplay among the forces of destruction and the broad ability (or inability) of a community, for myriad reasons, to withstand them and mitigate their impact. Hurricane Katrina is America’s most recent encounter with a megadisaster. But what made it a megadisaster instead of just another category 3 hurricane of the type that seasonally exists in the Gulf of Mexico? Katrina was not the largest or strongest hurricane to strike the United States mainland in the recent past, but its effects were devastating and wide reaching beyond our wildest nightmares, far beyond those of Hurricane Andrew (1992), a category 5 hurricane that scoured much of Florida and the Gulf Coast. Hurricane Katrina’s track directly targeted gaping vulnerabilities in infrastructure and society, and set in motion a series of events that culminated in the deaths of nearly 2000 people, resulted in hundreds of missing individuals, and caused a potential economic impact of up to $150 billion. The disruption of people’s lives was immeasurable, as was the impact on the long-term physical and mental health of the victims, which continues today. Katrina also led to a substantial decline in the confidence that the public has in its government to provide essential services during a disaster.Public healthrfg2101, pam2109, ab3179, dma3, ir2110Population and Family Health, Pediatrics, National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Sociomedical SciencesArticlesPublic Health Disaster Research: Surveying the Field, Defining its Futurehttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:155356
Abramson, David M.; Morse, Stephen S.; Garrett, Andrew L.; Redlener, Irwin E.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:15497Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000Disaster medicine and public health preparedness are commonly perceived as subfields of the larger fields of medicine and public health rather than being recognized as an emerging academic field embracing all of the disciplines that contribute to effective disaster response. As such, they serve as appropriate subjects for multidisciplinary work in the social sciences, whether it is a sociological analysis of mass behavior during a disaster, psychological studies of the willingness to work of various workforces, or organizational theory or network analyses applied to ad hoc disaster coalitions. Laboratory sciences and bioinformatics contribute as well to the development of new treatment modalities, medical products, and surveillance technologies. As is true in the broader medical and public health fields, much of the work is empirical and evaluative. In this article, the authors survey the literature in the field and suggest that broader, more ecologically based research is needed.Public healthdma3, ssm20, ir2110Population and Family Health, Epidemiology, Pediatrics, National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Sociomedical SciencesArticlesSafer Schools in an Age of Mass Violence: Back to the Basics of Public Healthhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:155347
Redlener, Irwin E.; Garrett, Andrew L.; Thomas, Gregory A.http://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:15494Thu, 03 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000Schools in the US are by and large safe environments where millions of our children are secure and thrive. Outbreaks of fatal violence like the recent shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) are, fortunately, rare. In fact, the odds of a student losing his or her life to homicide are 50 times more likely while off school grounds. Because of the extraordinary con- sequences and societal shock waves caused by a low-probability mass casualty disaster in a school, this becomes one of the “all hazards” that campuses must plan to face, albeit with limited budgets and resources. This is not to say that we should bypass the opportunity to learn from the lessons and unpredicted shortfalls that any crisis reveals. Within weeks of the lethal violence at Virginia Tech, the first round of meetings to analyze the catastrophe was organized in Washington, DC. Officials from the Departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services, along with a range of key stakeholders, participated in the discussions that focused on conditions or gaps that may have contributed to or exacerbated the consequences of this particular incident. The result of this after-incident analysis was a series of specific actions that could reduce the risk for a similar occurrence.Public healthir2110Population and Family Health, Pediatrics, National Center for Disaster PreparednessArticlesInterventions to Mitigate the Reduced Ability and Willingness to Work of Health Care Workers During a Pandemic Influenza Public Health Emergencyhttp://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:152835
Garrett, Andrew L.; Gill, Kimberlyhttp://hdl.handle.net/10022/AC:P:14775Wed, 26 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000Several widely publicized articles were released in the past two years which suggest that health care and public health employees may be unable or unwilling to report to work during a public health emergency involving contagion or contamination such as pandemic influenza, SARS, smallpox, or a terrorist attack using disease or radiation: A 2006 study of public health department workers, only 54% of those surveyed indicated that they would "likely report to work" during a pandemic influenza outbreak. In 2005 a national survey of pre-hospital care workers indicated that only 65% of EMTs were willing to report for duty during a smallpox outbreak. Also in 2005, only 48% of health care workers in the greater New York City area reported that they were "willing to work" during a widespread outbreak of SARS-like illness. Although a recurrence of pandemic influenza is inevitable, it was not until recently that there has been a very public acknowledgement of the impact it will potentially place upon society in terms of the delivery of medical care.Public health, EpidemiologyNational Center for Disaster PreparednessReports